Origami Tessellations

Can’t help but post this beautiful octagonal star design by Mélisande*:

She calls this piece “Stars, Flower and Octagons”. It’s an extension of a design she was exploring in December, based on an irregular negative-space octagonal star - the shape created when you connect lines from all four corners of a square to the midpoints along the sides.

She further details the origins of this shape via some geometrical explanations on this flickr post:

It has been used quite a bit historically, including this Moorish mosque (now a church) ceiling in Toledo, Spain. (Image used under CC license permission from albTotxo’s flickr photostream.)

And of course I would be remiss not to mention Mélisande’s new blog, starting 1/1/2008!

La Chronique de Mélisande*

I’d be hard pressed to find a nicer person out there. She has this to say about her art:

I’m not claiming my art to be only a product of my own genius, nor have I proprietarian pretentions on it : many of my ideas actually come from friends of mine and I’m happy when someone else find my work inspirational. It isn’t origami until you share it, according to my friend Philip Chapman-Bell.
Art is a way to abolish time, distance, and a consolation to our mortality.

Congratulations on your new blog, my friend, and I look forward to reading more about your creations.

For all of you out there, С новым годом, Happy New Year, Bonne Année, Feliz Año Nuevo, and prost Neujahr! May this new year of 2008 bring interesting times and good luck to all of us.

-Eric Gjerde

An alert Flickr friend let me know that my book appeared on Amazon.com:

Origami Tessellations: Fantastic Paper Geometry

I’m interested to see it listed, although it’s still in the final stages of layout and all that fun stuff. The “cover” shown is not the final one, but just the mock-up created for the catalog; I don’t know yet what the final cover will look like.

The final ship date is earlier than Jan 1, 2008- I hope, anyway- but nevertheless it’s not that far away, considering how much work still remains to be done on the publisher’s side of things.

Here’s the blurb text from Amazon, which (I’m guessing) is something that was written for the catalog that Lark sends out to all prospective purchasers.

Tessellations—shapes repeated over and over to fill a plane without overlapping—have inspired beautiful art, from intricate tile work to M.C. Escher’s playful graphics. Now, master origami artist Eric Gjerde has produced the same stunning kaleidoscopic patterns simply by folding paper! His awe-inspiring collection—the first of its kind—explores the creative possibilities of origami tessellations. The techniques will captivate anyone interested in papercrafting, mathematics, architecture, and design. Gjerde meticulously walks you through all the key folds and creases. Twenty-five projects are organized by complexity, beginning with the easy-to-learn Tiles Hexagon Tessellation and continuing to more exotic designs, like Arms of Shiva, Field of Stars, and Aztec Twist. Each one appears in extremely close-up photos—sometimes backlit—and an inspiring gallery of breathtaking tessellations by origami artists concludes the book.

So, things are moving along. This is the first visibly tangible evidence I have seen that this whole experience is actually real; it’s kind of strange, to be honest with you. I think when I hold the final result in my hands it’s going to be a very odd moment indeed.

-Eric

(PS: the amazon link is an affiliate thing, I don’t normally get all fired up about that sort of setup. However, I hope you don’t mind me referring my own book. Thanks!)

I am in love with The Institute for Figuring. If you’re at all interested in geometric art, tessellations, chaos, fractals, or really anything- you should become a member. It’s highly worthwhile.

Crocheted Hyperbolic Plane, copyright IFF

From their website:

The Institute For Figuring is an educational organization dedicated to enhancing the public understanding of figures and figuring techniques. From the physics of snowflakes and the hyperbolic geometry of sea slugs, to the mathematics of paper folding and graphical models of the human mind, the Institute takes as its purview a complex ecology of figuring.

It’s like someone took EVERYTHING out there that I find interesting, and wrapped it up into a non-profit with a cool website, publications, and speaking events! Fantastic stuff.

To whet your appetite, there’s a rather good article on mathematical paper folding on their site currently:

The Institute For Figuring // Online Exhibit: Mathematical Paper Folding

Enjoy!

I’ve been busy with some projects the last few weeks, and have really been out of touch with what’s happening lately. But I was very pleased to hear this morning from Philip that Joel Cooper has a blog! It’s great to see him have more of a web presence, as I see a pretty constant smattering of hits from people looking for him and his work- now there’s somewhere more concrete for them to see. (You’d think people could track down his contact info via Flickr, but somehow that rarely seems to happen- go figure.)

So congrats on the new undertaking, Joel, I’m looking forward to seeing new things from you! And I heartily encourage anyone else who is folding on a regular basis to consider starting a website/blog/etc to have a “home” for your web presence- it helps to connect people to you, and gives others a centralized starting point to refer to. This is a big plus, and very helpful for folks who want to find your work. Good all around!

Hi there everyone. I’ve been a little busy lately, going a bit bonkers with projects and some new 2007 craziness at work. Just posting some quick links and general end-of-the-year roundup bits here.

In case you missed it before, I uploaded some photos from my trip to the Italian origami convention in Verbania. I can’t lay claim to them being amazingly wonderful photos, but there’s some nice stuff in there, and lots of tessellations (what a shock, I know.) Make sure to check out the nice pieces by Sipho Mabona, who I had the great pleasure of finally meeting in person. (his flickr page: www.flickr.com/photos/sipmab). I was also very excited to meet Ralf Konrad, to see my good friend Mélisande again, as well as Roberto Gretter and several other nice people that I ran into at the OUSA convention in summer 2006.

OK, so moving on… I’d also like to point out the really interesting work coming from Ray Schamp and Polly Verity, and the group they post to most often: Origami Corrugations

There’s a lot of stuff here that I really dig, and it’s a good place for folded pleated goodness. I’m really into 3D pleated structures, and I’m just pleased as punch to know there’s other folks who feel the same way and who actually made a Flickr group about it!

Some other great stuff:

Tachi Tomohiro: so glad he joined Flickr- I love his work and being able to interact with him about it is doubleplusgood

Fernando Sierra (elelvis): I haven’t spoken to him yet, but seeing stuff like this over and over again from different people makes me think that I need to go to Colombia to study! There must be something amazing in the air down there…

Pietro Seminelli: Saw his work via a video link from Mélisande, and I’m floored- check out the leather pillow on his website. It’s fantastic, and I really need to make one just like it to match a chair in my office. That seems like another project for a rainy day, right there…

Marius Watz: I continually get a little buzz from his work, every time I see a new piece. This guy is great. His recent foray into rapid prototyping (with bronze!) is worth checking out, too.

Lots of things going on these days, I’ll try to make a better effort to post things rather than stashing them away with the best intentions of posting them “some day”!

Hope you had a stellar 2006- here’s to a wonderful 2007 and all the great things that the new year brings.

-Eric

(P.S. - we had a site glitch this last weekend- oops! back up and running now.)

Kirigami~06

Originally uploaded by lilzabubba.

Check out the wonderful Kirigami made by my wife, Bekah. She just started doing this a few days ago! Absolutely amazing how quickly she picks up new crafts!

It’s been one year since the Origami Tessellations photo pool was created, and we’re nearing 1000 photos with close to 100 members- with over 20 members who have actively contributed material to the group!
This makes me really happy; when I started using Flickr a while back there really wasn’t origami tessellation content on here, and now there’s a healthy, growing community of friendly, fun people. This is all possible because of the positive, sharing spirit you have all shown to each other, and to new members joining in.
I’d like to thank you all for being a part of something wonderful, and I hope we continue to share, contribute, and grow for years to come!

Please feel free to comment on the discussion page on Flickr (or here, if you want!)

-Eric

I was tipped off to some origami tessellations by Momotani (Yoshiide Momotani, I think) that were on display at a French origami meeting in May 2006. Here’s a link to the photo album:

origami.kwoon.info

I’m hotlinking the two most relevant images below- these will take you to the specific image pages on the photo gallery. There’s a lot of great tessellations here, quite a few of which various members of our origami tessellation group have been folding in the last couple of years. I’ve never seen any of these before, but I have to imagine that Momotani-san has been folding these sorts of things for decades now. It just goes to show you that there’s very little in the geometric origami world that someone else hasn’t thought of before, or folded before, completely independent of what you’ve been up to.

I can only hope I have a chance some day to meet this tessellation maker and admire some of the beautiful art. Anyone with more information on where I could see some more of Momotani’s tessellations, please contact me and let me know!

Aldo Tolino teaches me how to crumple, part 3 of 3

Originally uploaded by EricGjerde.

I received a wonderful email from Aldo Tolino- ionoi on flickr- with a link to a YouTube video he created that teaches you how to crumple paper, Vincent Floderer-style.

He says that he learned this technique last year at the Salzburg Origami Masters exhibition, in a class taught by Paul Jackson. (who apparently taught this technique to Floderer, as well!)

I really can’t believe that it’s this easy to do! so much fun. This was my first attempt, using a spare napkin laying around the office kitchen.

The video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bla5c5THSoI

This is totally unrelated to origami, but I thought I’d post it anyway.

My Brazilian co-worker was in an “Ultimate Cage Fight” this last weekend- he knocked out his opponent in 7 seconds with one kick. My wife and I went to the event, which honestly was pretty bizarre- but it was really fun to cheer for my friend and see him accomplish what he has been training for these last 6 months.

here’s the link:

http://www.origamitessellations.com/MaltaFight.wmv

Don’t watch this if you’re easily disturbed!

Looking forward to your next crazy cage fight, Caio.

See more info from his friend’s website here, including photos and the fight poster.

This won’t be a common sidestep from my normal website content, but it was just weird enough to share it with those of you who know me. For those of you who don’t- this isn’t my normal taste in entertainment

-Eric